


#aa0000

by riverbanks



Series: monochrome [2]
Category: Boys Love
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-04
Updated: 2007-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:42:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbanks/pseuds/riverbanks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chidori doesn't draw, but he likes watching Noeru draw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	#aa0000

Chidori doesn't draw, but he likes watching Noeru draw, and Noeru doesn't mind - Chidori's presence beside him when he's drawing has been a constant for as long as he can remember. He sits close enough that he can see what Noeru is doing over his arm, but not so close that Noeru can't move around to reach for a pencil in a different color, or a brush in a different size. Noeru's never told him, but he admires his friend for being able to just sit there and keep his hands still.

Chidori could never draw to save his life, but he used to have a set of crayons Noeru loved coloring with. Ken-chan gave him that set when they were six or seven, he can't tell anymore. Noeru even tried teaching him to draw for a while, but once the three of them accepted that Chidori's inability to put two straight lines together was a lost cause and he'd never do better than the stick figure level, Chidori was content to just let Noeru borrow the crayons whenever he wanted.

Noeru's favorite in the whole set was the red one, because it wasn't a plain red tone, the kind that comes in any ordinary school set; it was darker, richer, it changed tones depending on how the light hit the paper. It was a tone they could never quite understand, or put into words, and described simply as "Noeru's red".

Chidori used to call it "Noeru's red" because Ken-chan did. He never thought much about it until this one day, many years later, when Noeru and him were celebrating Noeru's first modelling gig; Noeru raised the glass of red wine in a toast, his laughter echoing in the air around them, and the way the sun caught on that glass and reflected that light all over them like a blanket of red, like the whole scene had been drawed and colored with Noeru's favorite crayon, everything felt just absolutely perfect, like all the words they couldn't find to describe that color, and Chidori finally understood: it wasn't just a color, it was _him_.

He's tried telling Noeru this story to explain why, to this day, he still calls that color "Noeru's red", but he can't seem to tell it the same way it keeps replaying over and over in his mind. Every time he tries, Noeru just laughs and says Chidori's losing his mind.

Noeru remembers those crayons as having a very nice, different texture, and he still regrets that they never remembered to note down the brand. And sometimes, after he's run down every art shop in town searching for those crayons, and tried every brand available in the country, and still none of them feels just about right, none of them has that exact same shade of red, Noeru does wonder if it was blind luck that the three of them were blessed with the one most perfect crayon set ever, or if he's just been dreaming the whole thing all along.


End file.
